Friday, February 26th, 2010
California Attorney General Jerry Brown can’t abide you fretting over your recalled Toyota or Lexus - so he just struck a deal with Toyota USA so that you’ll be taken care of when getting service.
It’s all going to be on a case-by-case basis, so if you’re totally freaked out and you just don’t want to drive your car no mo, then maybe your dealership can send somebody to come around your place to pick up your car, fix it and return it as good as new. Or you can get a loaner if your repairs go into extra innings.
Read the news, below.
Brown Forges Deal with Toyota to Help Consumers While Recalled Vehicles are Repaired
Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that his office has reached an agreement with Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc. to provide California Toyota owners with at-home pickup and vehicle return and cost-free alternative transportation while their recalled vehicles are being repaired.
“This agreement goes a long way towards easing the burden caused by Toyota’s massive recall,” Brown said. “It will now be much easier for Toyota owners to get to work and take their kids to school while critical safety repairs are made on their cars.”
Under the terms of today’s agreement, Toyota will provide owners of recalled vehicles the following services:
- Pick-up and return of vehicles by the dealership;
- Transportation to the dealership and/or to the owner’s place of work;
- Alternative transportation, such as a rental car, loaner vehicle or taxi reimbursement for a reasonable period that the customer is unable or unwilling to use his or her car; and
- Expedited scheduling for repair services.
These services will be provided by Toyota through the dealers at no cost to either the owners or the dealer.
The following Toyota vehicle recalls are covered by today’s agreement:
- September 29, 2009 for floormat entrapment;
- January 21, 2010 for sticking accelerator pedals;
- February 8, 2010 for anti-lock brake system issues; and
- February 12, 2010 for drive-shaft failure.
The following vehicles are involved in the recent Toyota and Lexus vehicle recalls: 2005-2010 Avalon, 2007-2010 Camry, 2009-2010 Corolla, 2007-2010 ES 350, 2008-2010 Highlander, 2006-2010 IS 250 and IS350, 2009-2010 Matrix, 2004-2009 Prius, 2010 Prius, 2009-2010 RAV4, 2008-2010 Sequoia, 2005-2010 Tacoma, 2007-2010 Tundra, 2009-2010 VENZA, and 2010 HS 250h.
More information on the specific vehicles affected by the recalls can be found at www.nhtsa.dot.gov and www.toyota.com/recall.
Californians are encouraged to contact their local Toyota and Lexus dealers if they believe they are eligible for these accommodations. Consumers can also contact Toyota’s customer service center at 1-800-331-4331 or Lexus at 1-800-255-3987.
This agreement will remain in place until all Toyota vehicles subject to the recall have been repaired. If additional safety recalls arise, an extension of this agreement or other appropriate provisions will be pursued.
Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc. is based in Torrance, CA.
Tags: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, accelerator, anti-lock, attorney, attorney general, Avalon, brake, brown, ca, california, camry, christopher Reynolds, corolla, dealership, drive-shaft, driveshaft, drop off, edmund, entrapment, ES 350, fail, failure, floormat, General Counsel, group vice president, Highlander, HS 250h, inc, IS 250, IS350, jerry brown, Jr, lawyer, lexus, lexuses, lexuseses, loaner, matrix, motors, motos, pedals, pickup, prius, rav4, recall, recallm defective, repair, sacramento, sales, San Francisco, Sequoia, sticking, system, tacoma, Torrance, toyota, Toyota Motor Sales USA, toyotas, Tundra, usa, VENZA
Posted in cars | No Comments »
Monday, November 16th, 2009
San Francisco’s hungry raccoons are delighting the online world the world over, entertaining millions with their poses of masked banditry. And why not – aren’t they cute?
Here’s another view from the camera of shutterbug Stephen Thompson. It was 2:00 AM at the Legion of Honor museum:
And here’s the full story. Dude jogs around town in the midnight hour carrying his point-and-shoot camera in a sock. Bravo.
But these photos were taken in 2006. They hung around as 1’s and 0’s until Stephen posted them to Flickr a few months back. Then, they were noticed by the Fantastic Mr. Fox – Andrew Fox, Webmaster at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF). He made a post to the FAMSF Facebook and then the rest is history.
Are these gorgeous but fiesty raccoons now the cutest animals in San Francisco?
Maybe.
But remember, we’ll always have Parrots.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill that is:
Click to expand, it gets big. From 2005, above Telegraph Hill. Remember this day? The parrots wore green, you wore blue.
Thanks for posting your photos, Stephen Thompson.
Tags: 18, 2006, 2009, 46th, avenue, bandits, britain, drivers, england, famsf, feeding, food, great, legion, legion of honor, Lincoln Park, London, mta, Muni, museum, newspapers, parrots, paw nation, raccoon, raccoons, racoons, San Francisco, SF, SFMTA, Stephen Thompson, stonesmerced, telegraph hill, viral, we'll always have Parrots, wild, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Posted in Animals | Comments Off
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
These newish posters in San Francisco’s Western Addition sure seem to be drawing attention to the quarter-million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the suspect(s) responsible for the murder of Aubrey Abrakasa, Jr.
As seen yesterday:
On it goes…
Tags: 14, 14th, 2006, abrakasa, Abrasa, Abraskasa, aubrey, august, baker, crime, department, grove, NOPA, panhandle, police, reward, San Francisco, SFPD, shooting, streets, western addition
Posted in crime | Comments Off
Friday, January 30th, 2009
ABC7 KGO TV”s I-Team, featuring chief investigative reporter Dan Noyes, brings news of a settlement in San Francisco’s Baker’s Dozen / News Year’s Bash / Gleegate incident from a couple years back. The question at the time was “what’s up with Ken Garcia“?
That was a reference to this column from January 2007: Ken Garcia: Politics bubble beneath Yale Baker’s Dozen case, which provided justification for what happened to the Baker’s Dozen. The trouble with this is today’s news of the statements from San Francisco locals Richard Aicardi and Brian Dwyer, who both go:
“There is no justification for what happened to the Baker’s Dozen.“
Yale’s Baker’s Dozen, during happier times:
So that’s the danger when you set up a straw man argument, one involving “singing saints” and “Catholic school thugs” – you might not be able to knock it down.
Lesson learned.
Tags: 2006, 2007, 2009, a cappella, aicardi, bakers dozen, Brian Dwyer, california, cathedral, catholic, catholic shool thugs, club, dick, dwyer, glee, high school, ken garcia, new years eve, Richard Aicardi, richmond, Sacred Heart, saint ignatius, San Francisco, Sharyar Aziz, singing, St. Ignatius, university, yale
Posted in crime | Comments Off
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
If you want the short version of what happened last night, take a look at Dave Golden’s great high-ISO photos with his Nikon on Flickr (which would not be possible to produce with Nikon digital equipment even just a few years ago) and this early report on SFGate and this rather negative take from KPIX. And see street party suppressor David Perry point of view here.
Or you can have the long version:
First, let’s travel back in time to San Francisco Halloween Past. It looked like this, with huge crowds in the Castro District:
Click to expand.
See the huge crowd?
Even crosstown rivals the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders managed to get along:
But the word crowd starts with the letter “C” and that rhymes with “T” and that stands for Trouble.
So now in 2008, Halloween in San Francisco is officially cancelled, or not, depending you look at it. Last night we had this, a police effort to keep traffic moving through the Castro. At this, the SFPD generally succeeded. Because the spice must flow, you know:
Read all about it here, which reads like the official blog of the City and County of San Francisco. Now, of course you can still see what the old Halloween looked like, before the NIMBY homeowners of the Castro got their way, but just not as much of it.
Honoring the late Yves Saint Laurent:
Credit cards! Now, those can be scary, especially these days.
And speaking of scary, how does evidence of falling gas prices scare potential alernative vehicle investors?
Per reports, about 30 people were arrested in the Castro are for being drunk in public.
Anyway, that was unofficial San Francisco Halloween in the Castro. Some people didn’t show because they listened to the white men here.
As for Official San Francisco Halloween in Parking Lot A:
You could watch Godzilla for free with a handful of others…”
…or listen to a perfectly viable Latin jazz band with a couple hundred of others.
Turnout was about what you’d expect to get in a dark parking lot with heavy police presence.
Speaking of which, the city’s official free party is a magnet for young people and all the assorted trouble young people get into to. You can’t sneak in, so you have to go through a Super Bowl style security cattle chute. So the criminal element circles around the parking lot, attracted and yet repelled.
Add it all up, and the Castro area comes out ahead as far as personal safety is concerned. Next ranked would be inside the perimeter of Parking Lot A. Last ranked would be the area surrounding Parking Lot A. If you charged a cover, then you’d keep out the riff raff, but then why would people come?
A brief police detention on 3rd Street, just outside the official party near AT&T Park.
Possession of eggs on Halloween is not yet a crime, at least not yet, anyway.
Akit brings it all home for us on his blog.
On it goes.
Happy Halloween. See you next year in the Castro!
Tags: 2006, 2008, arrests, at&t park, costumes, david parry, david perry, halloween, home, market, parking lot, police, San Francisco, SFPD, street
Posted in events | Comments Off
